Giant, unexplained half-mile long fissure opens up in Mexico

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

First giant holes start popping up in Siberia, and now this. A giant crack has opened up in the Earth near the city of Hermosillo Desde El Cielo in Mexico. The fissure is more than half a mile long and five meters (16 feet) wide in places. It happened to intersect Highway 26, which connects Hermosillo Desde El Cielo to the coast. Well, it used to. Now it’s impassable. Residents and geologists are understandably baffled.

The crack is as deep as 8 meters (26 feet) in some places, which is more than enough to cause problems if you were to wander aimlessly in the Mexican desert and fall in. You can only imagine how much more troubling it would be if this crevasse has opened up a few miles to the east in Hermosillo. As it is, farm workers have been diverting around Highway 26, but many of the smaller side roads in the area are in poor shape.

In the video above, you can see a drone flying over one of the more impressive sections of the fissure. There are other areas where it’s much shallower with very little collapsed earth. Still, you wouldn’t want to be driving cars over it, at least until further geological instability is ruled out. There have been reports of a smaller network of cracks forming near Highway 4 to the north of the large crack.

The most likely cause of the crack is an earthquake last Sunday on the San Andreas fault. It wasn’t a major quake, which is why the appearance of such a substantial geological formation is so unusual. Other scientists believe an underground water source is to blame for the collapse. Whatever the cause, just watch where you step, okay?